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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
David Rutherford Show: Saving Lives Under Fire - Marine Recon Corpsman Tom Rader
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Tom Raider
This is an iHeart podcast.
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David Rutherford
Today on the David Rutherford Show, I want to welcome Mr. Thomas Raider, former Navy corpsman, but was not a Navy corpsman. He was a corpsman for the Marine Corps, which is a way lot cooler. So. And I shouldn't say that to all the other nav brother and corpsman out there, but there is just something that is the historical relevance of being a Navy corpsman for the Marine Corps is there's a what? There's a historical legacy, just with the level of commitment that these corpsmen and the love that they would get from those infantry, Marine, or MARSOC Marine guys. And, you know, there's just. I don't know, there's. It's difficult to describe. So, Tom, welcome to the show, and thank you so much.
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Tom Raider
Awesome. Thanks for having me on.
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David Rutherford
Yeah. All right, tell me. Let's just introduce the audience a little bit about your background. When did you go in? Why did you choose to be a corpsman? And. And was it initially going to be a corpsman for the Navy, or was it always you wanted to be with the Marine Corps?
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Tom Raider
No. So, so basically I, my history is a, you know, a whole string of making poor life choices really. And I did everything backwards. I actually went and got my degree in college first and I was on the long term plan finding out whatever subject was interesting or would take me out of the country until the university basically sent me a letter and said, can you just please pick a major and get out of the degree in anthropology and a minor in psych, because that was what I had the closest amount of credits in. So then I moved out. I moved away from New Mexico to Texas and, you know, chasing my first wife and, you know, got a job doing software of all things. So I was a programmer and got really super burnt out doing that. And then just kind of a high pressure, you know, you know, firm I worked for. And I was like, all right, what's the furthest thing away from programming I can do? So I had taken like a wilderness for bay course and thought, hey, that's pretty cool and interesting. So I decided to put myself through paramedic school. So I basically went to EMT basic. Did, you know, did that, became a paramedic and worked in basically one of the small cities between Dallas and Fort Worth for a little while. And you know, it's funny, I ended up finding out that, you know, it was actually pretty close to programming. People are just kind of meat computers, right? You have inputs, you have variables, you make some changes and there's algorithms. It's right, like. So I really didn't escape it. I just, you know, changed the, the substrate I was working with. And while I was working as a paramedic, we had this recruiter come in for the Navy Reserve and he was specifically looking for medics because he had like this, this way for basically the advanced pay grade program is basically they could push button you in at a higher rank to start with based on life experience. So I was able to, you know, basically push button in as an E4 because he came in, he's like, hey, you know, like we got this cool gig where you can spend one week in a month and two weeks in the year and make some extra money and go to some cool schools. And I'm like, you know, I like money, right? And I like going to fun schools. So yeah, sign me up. So about that time, I ended things with my first wife and moved back to New Mexico and Albuquerque specifically. And so the reserve unit I attached to there was a joint Navy Marine unit. And I had some other, I'd done some executive protection, some other, you Know, kind of pseudo combative stuff. And so, like, they saw, I don't know, like, how. How the sorting hat worked, but they're like, you should go hang out with the Marines. And I was like, okay, that sounds good. And, you know, like, reserve, like, the way I kind of went in, it was a little backwards, right? Like, there was not, you know, it's not like, going, like, full Navy, right? Like, so it's, you know, you're basically. You spend your weekend doing, you know, stupid admin tasks and, like, you know, hardly anything. Yeah, I went to boot camp. I got to skip a school because I was already a paramedic and was well beyond that level, right? So it was kind of cool from that regard, but then, you know, they threw me into the Marines, and I was like, okay. And it turned out it was a Marine recon unit or a recon battalion, actually, specifically. And so I was like, okay, that sounds good. I. I really didn't have a whole understanding. I mean, New Navy provided medical to the Marine Corps, right? But it didn't really, you know, like, I didn't understand exactly what that meant. And I hadn't really delved too much into it because again, it was just kind of like a side. Side hustle thing, right? I mean, really. And then. And then it turns out, like, it wasn't really that much of a side hustle because, you know, it was, you know, 2000. So I enlisted in 2003. And then around 2006, we got our warning order, or 2005, end of 2005, we got our warning order saying that we're going to go to go play in Iraq either end of 2006, 2007, and they're like. And that was right when, you know, the whole, like, MARSOC thing was, like, yeah, you know, starting up. And so they had gutted Force Recon for the most part, and all those guys got sucked over into marsoc, and so that left kind of a void. And so they're like, you guys are gonna have to go fill a force role. And it's like, yeah, but we're battalion, right? Which is like, you know, like, we're doing, like, hydrographic reconnaissance on the beach and, like, you know, beach clearing and stuff, right? It's like, nothing super sexy like door kicking and all the other stuff, but they're like, oh, guess what you get to go do, right? So, by the way, there's some other schools you have to go to now. So I ended up spending pretty much 2005 through the time we deployed going to schools of various things. Like, so.
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David Rutherford
So that's cool.
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Tom Raider
Well, kind of an sotg, because, you know, for recon sotg, like the Special Operations Training Group, the shooting package basically is done in house at the. At the various, you know, recon units. And since we were reserve unit, we didn't have a dedicated one. So we had. And plus, they. Everybody was all spun up, right? Like, all the schoolhouses were full for everything, right. During gwat. That's just how it was. And so, like, we ended up getting a bunch of, like, former SOTG instructors had formed a company to teach SOTG for units that didn't. Couldn't get scheduled. So we got one of those. I ended up going to, you know, like, all the medical training as well, so live tissue. We had to go to, like, dynamic entry school, learn how to breach and all that other stuff. And that's when I really found out that I was no longer a corpsman. I was just a Marine that was in the Navy, right. And I happened to kick doors and I would do medical stuff if things went bad, right? Like, that was. That was. That was really the mindset change. And it was kind of interesting because I hadn't, you know, here I am, like, making sure everybody's medical records are good and, you know, doing vaccines and all the other, you know, stuff that we have to do is hormone, right? But then it's like, oh, by the way, you're going to be in the stack now, right? And, you know, that's. That's going to be your thing. So I was like, all right, well, it sounds good. I'm getting to go to cool schools and I'm making pay, so who cares, right? Like, it's fun and still young enough to not be too broken. Although I was one of the older guys in the unit at that point, since I'd already done a whole bunch of stuff and. Yeah. So then basically, you know, first part of 2007, we kicked over and we deployed as actually a full battalion. So it was two recon reserve units. So it was Charlie Company and Delta Company. I was part of Delta Company. And so we deployed as, like, a full, you know, battalion, which hadn't apparently been done and I guess since Vietnam or something. I don't know if that's true, but that's what they were telling us. It sounded exciting. Yeah. So we staged out of Al Asad and, you know, because. And again, too, like, you know, it was, you know, the rumor mill works in the military, right? So, like, what we were Told is basically army lost control of Anbar, so they sent the Marines back in to soften it up in 2007. And it sounded good, right? And, you know, I don't know if that's exactly true, but, I mean, there are a lot of Marines there, and a lot of things were getting, you know, wrecked, as Marines tend to do. And so, like, our job was basically just to support those. Those units they were given. You know, each of those units were given, like, a patch of desert to own, and then we would go out and supplement as needed. Then we had some overarching stuff. Like we were supposed to kind of mess with the. The inflow pipeline of insurgents coming in from Syria, transiting the northern western deserts, and dropping down to reinforce Baghdad. So we had some, like, little kind of general mission stuff that we were doing that. But mainly it was just to kind of play around or wreck havoc. And, you know, it seemed like kind of a nothing deployment, really, honestly. Right. There was nothing super, like, sexy. Like, we didn't get into, you know, firefights daily or anything, you know, but we did put in a lot of work.
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David Rutherford
And I would imagine coming after, you know, what, Fallujah, Ramadi, Solder City, all those fights where Marines were just legends in the combat. It's like.
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Tom Raider
Yeah. So I had this expectation because it was supposed to be one of the bloodiest times, because that's when the IED started picking up and they started really pushing the EFPs, right? They were, like, really, you know, upgrading their technology on the insurgency side. And so, like, I expected it to be a lot worse, but, like, where we were operating was just, like, in raw desert out in the middle of nowhere for the most part. And so there just wasn't really a lot of that. I mean, you know, there were. There were the occasional IEDs, of course, right. But, you know, like, my worst. The worst injury on my. My guys was like a heat stroke, right? Which is. Which is awesome, right? Because, you know, like, none of my. None of my brothers got. You know, we didn't lose anybody on our deployment. And my unit had actually, in the previous, like, they'd lost a couple of people in Haditha when that. That went sideways. So there was. There was some, you know, some salty history there, of course. But, you know, by and large, we. You know, we ran a lot of stuff. Another interesting thing that we had happen was is we had our platoon sergeant came over. He was recently from Second Force, and they had organized differently. Typically in a Marine recon, they have, like, three operational teams and then a support team. And technically, corpsmen are part of the support team, but we'll integrate in, right? And so there's three corpsmen generally, or there's three corpsman slots assigned to a recon company. And what our platoon sergeant decided to do is to make four teams, right? So he kind of diluted everything down, but we still only had three corpsmen, so I ended up being the floater. So I supported two teams, and so I was running, like, generally twice as many missions, right? Because, like, you know, when we'd task out, like, the other two teams had kind of a dedicated corpsman, and I just supported the other two because that's just kind of how I was. I was like, I'll take them, right? Like, who cares, right? Like, when am I going to get to come play in Iraq again? I might as well get all the experience. Plus, I have to touch, you know, my. My background in anthropology, right. I'm getting to see, like, literally places
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David Rutherford
that we had discussed where history began. Yeah.
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Tom Raider
Y. I mean, on Al Asad was Abraham's oasis, right? Like, I mean, it's a little crappy swamp area, but I mean, that's been referenced in, you know, like, you know, religious texts forever, right? And so.
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David Rutherford
Thousands of years.
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Tom Raider
Yeah, thousands of years. Right. So you're. You're. You're seeing, like, this ancient civilization, which for me was kind of like a cool little side quest I got to hang out on, right? Like, at the government's dime. So.
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David Rutherford
So after that deployment, what happened next?
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Tom Raider
So, basically, we did our deployment, we came back, and at that point, I was looking to level up in rank, and the problem was, is that the way I still had to, because I'm still Navy, so I have to compete against other corpsmen. But transitioning. And at that point, I was an E5, so transitioning to an E6, I had to have so many corpsmen under me, I had to have some leadership on actual corpsmen, and there just wasn't the availability in a recon unit because I only had two other guys. So. So they transferred me back to Fleet Hospital, Dallas, and I became the lead petty officer for that. And so I had, like, 40 corpsmen under me. Right? Wow. Very first. My very first weekend or week on it, like, one of the corpsmen showed up drunk, right? And so, like, I ended up spending my first day, like, you know, going for DUI check and all that. It was just. I was like, okay, this is dumb, right? So, like, so I went from, like, you know, like this, you know, pretty. Pretty Fun. I wouldn't call it necessarily high speed, but I guess it was. Right? Who cares?
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David Rutherford
Yeah, it is.
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Tom Raider
Of course, I don't want to downplay it, but I mean, like, we weren't, you know, we weren't out there, like, you know, like the Clay Martins of the world or whatever. Right.
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David Rutherford
Well, that. There's not that many of those guys, by the way.
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Tom Raider
There's just.
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David Rutherford
Yeah. So.
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Tom Raider
Yeah. You know, but. Yeah, so, like, you know, then I'm. I'm hanging out with people who can't, like, maintain, like, you know, basic life functions. Right. And I'm like, okay. Right. So I did that for. For a few months, long enough to. To get, you know, my required, you know, check mark in the box. And then, you know, banged out my E6 exam. And then. And then basically kind of was like, you know, near into my service, so I was like, you know, timing out of my contract, and I decided I didn't really want to push the rest of the way. I thought about going, like, full sarc. So the Special on Field User Reconnaissance Corps, I guess they're sodic now. I mean, who knows Strange names on those things all the time. Because I had a taste for it. But then again, I wasn't sure that I wanted to pump 20 years into the whole thing because you could see things were winding down even around 2008, 2009, you could see that the taste for it had softened a little bit. And so I just wasn't sure what. What there was going to be going on forward, like, if it was going to continue to be, like, a worthwhile pathway or not. And so. And I had some other opportunities come up in, you know, the other side of my life and decided to hook over to those instead.
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David Rutherford
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- [18:41]
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David Rutherford
You know I think those moments for each of us is a little bit different. Like that sense of feeling of you know, where is this all like what is the mission set? Is it evolving? Because like I Remember by, by 2011 at the agency, I'm in Pakistan most of that year and, and I'm like man, this just, it's just change. Especially post bin Laden raid and then extortion happened and I'm like this is just a different thing, you know. And you know you heard some rumblings about what was and then the following year obviously because I, I was on the fence of trying to get to another within the agency. And you know, and then Benghazi happened and then I was just like, this is bizarre. What the hell is going on? And you know, and then you start to make that transition on like, what do you do next? So before we go into like, what you did after that and how you've taken that experience and built a life for yourself afterwards, can you just talk about one going through civilian paramedicine training and then even maybe talk about some of the courses that you learned and in, in the military, some maybe more advanced medical courses. Like I remember, probably the best course I ever went through was in my first platoon. I went through a two week called, called course called Advanced Battlefield Trauma where we, where we took that T triple C model. We, we broke it out as much as we could with case studies for four days and then we spent, you know, the rest of the time, really the next 10 days doing man down drills in every environment. You, you know, in the, Trying to do CPR in a zodiac, trying to put a tourniquet on in the surf zone. Right. Trying to, you know, giving IVs and helos at night under, you know, as they're screaming around, you know, so really, you know, can you just talk about medical training and what you learned about not only medicine, but about yourself too? Because, and we talked about this a little bit before we hopped on. There's this dichotomy, right. When you're a medic in the, in the military is like, yeah, you're, you became a door kicker. You, you, like that was your primary focus who had. Sometimes you were medic. But the, the real gist of your presence in that platoon, I'm, I'm sure was the fact that all those door kickers, those pipe hitters saw you over there and they're like, no, Tom's our boy, we're good. And what that responsibility. So that's a big question pre and during and kind of what you learned about yourself.
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Tom Raider
Yeah, yeah. So to touch on, so paramedics like going through like, like urban EMS or civilian ems that was, you know, it was, it's very academic, honestly. Right. Like there's, there's a lot more. I had the fortune to go through a hospital based program rather than a university or college based program.
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David Rutherford
Oh, that's cool.
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Tom Raider
Which was really nice because like, we didn't have to fight for clinicals. The hospital was very supportive. So, you know, like we learned on real patients for the most part. We had subject matter experts. Right. Like when I learned to intubate it was under an anesthesiologist, you know, so, like, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, we did some basic stuff on, on the mannequin. And then, you know, it's like it was a county hospital, so it's like, hey, don't break their teeth. Right?
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David Rutherford
Because remember, remember the first time they look over and you're like, what do you think you want to do this one? And you're like, yeah, I want you. You're like raking that, you know, you're like,
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Tom Raider
yeah. So it was awesome, right? So we got to do all that stuff. We would run, you know, so it was really good from that, that standpoint. But, like, the problem with the urban EMS or civilian EMS is that it's, it's based on passing an exam. You, you know, yes, you're going to go do it practically in the field, but how you operate in the field is different. How you take a multiple guess exam that's run for a national standard because each state has its own little fiefdom over ems, and so you have to deal with that. And in Texas at the time, Texas wasn't. They were just starting to do the national registry, which was kind of the big thing that everybody does now. But at the time, they still had their own state exam. And so when I went through, they trained us how to pass the state exam, and then we went out and we did our clinical rotations in the field. So, like, our field work and then we had to come back and then unlearn what we learned in the field. Because, you know, whoever writes the exam are clearly the people who are not in the field. Right. Like just. Well, to be honest about it. Right. Because that's how a lot of that works. Right. The people who have the time to sit in the office are probably not your hard charging, you know, field medics. And the stuff that you do in the field, you have to improvise sometimes, right? Like, yes, you've got access to equipment a lot more than you do in the military. Well, yes and no. I guess I should stage that. But, you know, like, there, there's a different expectation as well. Right. Like, there's a lot more freedom to do stuff in the military. You have a lot of protocols and stuff on the civilian side, but you still have to, you know, make decisions on the fly. And sometimes, you know, there's no perfect protocol you can follow for everything, you know, and so. But then on the exam, they're testing you on these, like, perfect ideals. So you might learn to do something in the Field. Right. Which is like, I don't want to say it's borderline, it's functional and it's absolutely life saving for the patient, but it was never accounted for in a multiple choice exam. And so you have to, when you take the exam, you have to pass the exam. So then you have to go back, learn how to take the exam, and then you have to go back to the field, relearn how to do the field again. Right. So it's like this weird, this is weird piece. And then hospital medicine, doing stuff in a hospital is different than how you do stuff when you're in the back of an ambulance.
- [27:40]
David Rutherford
Completely different, man. I remember going through like our week in New York at, at JSON C, right. We're up in. And I remember I did. I think we did, we did four weeks. So it was like, first seven days you're on an ambulance, next seven you're in a hospital. Ambulance, hospital. So my first seven days I'm on the, in an ambulance with one dude that's been in a, a paramedic for 22 years in New York and another dude that's been a paramedic for 19 years. Right. And so my first week are with these guys who've seen everything. Yeah, they're salty as, man. They've seen everything, done everything. Like, one of my first nights was like, it was Halloween night, we got a cardiac arrest in the Bronx. You know, climb up seven flights of stairs, I'm carrying everything, break in, you know, you know, six foot four firefighter on this dude that's like five, five, you know, huge gut, just going to town. And the dude, 19 year guy looks at me is like, all right, rookie, go ahead. You know, and I'm like, you know, you dive in and the guy dies. You know, after 45 minutes, the other guy calls it through the dock at the hospital and. And I'm sitting there and like, this is my first time I ever lost a person. First time I've ever worked on a dead person. First time anything in my life. And the, the 19 year guy's sitting with his cup of coffee at his feet, at the other, at his head is the wife and the, the son and the girlfriend, I think. And like, I stopped and I'm like sitting there, I'm sweating, all my shit's all over the place. They start crying, breaking down. They're like, no, don't stop, don't stop. And I look over this guy like, what should I do? And he's like, hey, man, pick up your. I'm hungry. Let's go get some food. And I'm like. And then I. And then, like, what? And then the next week, I'm in the ER at Kings county in Brooklyn, and it's a completely different thing. And I'm like, I feel schizophrenic right now. And. And I don't think people quite understand how radically medicine can be from being on an ambulance to being an. In a. In the ER verse, you know, anesthesiology, to being a combat medic, you know, downrange. And so try and encapsulate that for the. The audience, because that operating across those planes take so much attention to detail, I think, is the best.
- [30:28]
Tom Raider
Well, and ability to adapt, too, that whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Like, you have to be so flexible with it. I mean, you know, TV is. Is tv, right? And people have this weird expectation about how medicine works, right, based on what they saw in ER Scrubs or whatever you're watching for the day, right?
- [30:44]
David Rutherford
The pit. The pit is the new one.
- [30:46]
Tom Raider
Yeah, yeah. Right. So, like. And so, you know, like, when. When you think about it, right, like, the. The patients you get in hospitals are the ones that survived long enough to get to the hospital, right? So you're missing this whole section of the people who are in the field, right? And so a lot of those patients don't make it to the hospital, right? Yeah, it just. That is. It is what it is. Right? And your job as a medic is to basically stabilize them long enough to make them somebody else's problem, right? Like, that's, you know, you're hiding the sick and injured from public view. That's what you're doing, right? And you're trying to get them to the hospital so they can be there with the equipment, the bright shiny lights, the, you know, the. The docs who have years of experience and the surgeons and all that. And so, like, you know, my job as a medic was to stabilize them long enough to get to that care. And so you. You really have to, you know, like, kind of, you know, change the frame of your mind. You don't have a lot of time. That's the whole golden hour, like, whatever term you want to use for it, right? You have this short amount of time to basically, you know, stop the dying, right, and then stabilize long enough for that better treatment. That's really what it comes down to. And there's a bunch of techniques and drugs and, you know, equipment you can use to do that. And, you know, like, it was good, right? From that standpoint. Because I started in the hospital, right, like with the training and so I got to see like the patients that were there first, right? So like reverse from you basically, right where you got to start, right, right in the field, right in the thick of it. So in the hospital I get to see what, what the patients that they get to the hospital look like. And then in the field it was kind of like a, more of a better because like, okay, so now I know how they need to look by the time they get to the hospital, right? Like, you know what, what I'm trying to do, that's my goal is to get them to that state. And so it gave me a better framing, I think, at least personally, right. Because I knew what the instate was supposed to be, right. Then I could kind of, you know, like, okay, like I, you know, I don't have to make it perfect, right. I don't have to solve all their problems. I have to solve enough problems so I can get them right to the people who can actually do the long term fixes, right? Because I can pump in drugs. I can, you know, we, we can take a heart out of the human body, right? Put it in a beaker full of saline, hit it with some epi and it's going to beat, right? Doesn't mean it's viable, right. But I can make a human heart beat inside a human, right. When there's, when it's just a, effectively a piece of meat, right? Like that's. Yeah. You know, and that's one of the things that we did in like the, you know, the advanced training in the military, right. Is like, you know, like when we do our live tissue training, right? Like you're working, right? You, you there, there's not a bit of trauma. You are not 100 capable of coming out of those courses, should you? That's another question, right? Like that's right. Like that's a, you know, there's a, there's some philosophical, moral, ethical things that never get talked about in medicine, right? Because we, we have the technical and mechanical capability of keeping people alive. Absolutely. Right. But at a certain point, right, like you know, that person's not going to be viable. So you're doing it for the family. Like you were doing CPR mostly for the family at that point, honestly. Right. You know, when you think about the heart as a pump, right. Like any sort of hydraulic or mechanical system, the pump failed, right. If it failed from too many cheeseburgers, right. The fix for that is, right, Surgery. They need surgery right now. And depending on how bad that pump failed, right? Like you, you might not do anything. You can mechanically push it and you can mechanically move the blood around the body, but that doesn't mean that that heart is still functional. Right. And so there's this weird part that took me being in the military to really kind of gel in and understand, especially coming out of live tissue and then going down range and seeing some of the injuries that came into the aid stations when we run shifts there is that we can absolutely save just about anybody. Right? I mean, really. Right. I mean, when you look at the number of KIAs versus the wounded coming out of GWAT, that number is pretty different than previous wars, right?
- [34:39]
David Rutherford
7, 400 versus what is something like 40,000, 45,000 or something casualties or something.
- [34:45]
Tom Raider
And that's like physical injuries, right? Like, we're not talking about like bad, like mental injuries, right? Yeah, you know, like, you know, coming out of live tissue, we could keep our patient alive with, you know, missing significant portions of that patient. Yep, right. Like that's, you know. Yeah, we can do that. Right. Should we though? That's the question. And that's, you know, again, getting into some of those philosophical discussions, right? Like, nobody gives you training on that, right?
- [35:10]
David Rutherford
And so what do you mean the, the, the, the four hour ethics class isn't enough, Right?
- [35:17]
Tom Raider
Yeah, exactly. Right. From med legal standpoint, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're providing care. You have a job, you have a duty to act. You're going to do what you can with that, right? Yeah. You know, but like, at a certain point, like, you see, you know, like. Yeah, it's just, there's a lot, there's a lot of training that doesn't go into it. And I think, you know, when you start thinking about like PTSD and things like that, a lot of that kind of contributed in because you're, you're carrying these weird cognitive loads that you were just not trained on how to do and you're having to basically figure that out real time and you know, what is arguably a person's worst day of their life, right? Because it's not like you ever call a paramedic or, you know, you call a corpsman, you know, like when you're happy, right? Like, and things are going well, right? Like you're, you're calling for a medic when things are bad, right? Like, that's, that's the job and so, and that's a lot of load to absorb for people too, right? Because, you know, cosmetics, you end up seeing lots of dead people, right? And you have lots of people die in front of you that you could do nothing for. Right? And so. And you have to carry that load, and you have to try and carry it in a stoic enough fashion that you're not, you know. You know, causing damage to the people that are still there, like the family. Right. You know, like, I have a good example for my personal history. Like, my. My dad called me one day and said, hey, mom's not responding, and what should I do? And I was like, get the. Off the phone with me and call 91 1. Yeah, right. So he calls 91 1. I race down there, and I get there and I see a paramedic doing CPR on my mom. Right. I know what this means, right? Like, I know, you know, I. You know, there's. There's no question in my mind. Dad has no idea. Paramedic turns around, makes eye contact with me. It turns out it was a buddy of mine from high school or, I'm sorry, from college that I didn't know was a paramedic. He was doing cp. He was on duty. Cpr, my mom. And he's like. He mouths at me, like, what the are you doing here? And I was like, dude, that's my mom. Right? And so he started working my mom harder, and he ended up getting a pulse back. Right.
- [37:17]
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- [37:17]
Tom Raider
He actually did the. Did the job of getting her back. So the problem was then is that my dad then saw the paramedic get a pulse back on my mom, but it was non viable. I knew it was non viable. Yep. Yeah. And so now I'm having to be like, I just wish I. You know, the horrible thought was, I just wish that they had let her die. Right?
- [37:38]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [37:38]
Tom Raider
Yeah. But then now we got to go to the hospital, and now I have to deal with the. The second trauma of dad. Right. Like dealing with mom dying twice, basically. Right? Yeah. And. And so that. So that was kind of a hard. You know, it's a good illustrative example that I teach, you know, students, like, when I teach, like, medicine and stuff, is that, you know, you have to understand, like, some of these procedures you're doing, you're doing it for the family, right? It's that you're not doing it for the patient itself. And so you have to be. But you also have to be careful in that you're not providing false hope about something as well.
- [38:11]
David Rutherford
A hundred percent. That's the one that I think is the most difficult pressure on medics, right. For everybody involved, from the patient to everything you Know, and it's funny you brought that up, not funny, but you brought the story about your mom. My mother in law, my father in law had a widowmaker drops in his kitchen, she calls immediately, they say start cpr. And she didn't really know, they talked her through it. The, the, the rig got there in three minutes, was in the house by five minutes, hooked him up to an aed, got the, got a pulse rate and ended up saving his life. And you know, so everybody's like, oh, it works and cpr, everybody in their sphere of influence and oh, you're always going to get a three minute response and have the AED on in five minutes tops and life flight and you know, out and it's, everything's going to go perfectly. And you know, I remember when they told me this story, I was just like gay. Do you absolutely know how unbelievably miraculous that whole thing was? That one, you kept your composure. Two, you perform the technique right. Three, they were as close as they were. Four, they didn't something up. Five, life flight was, you know, all like everything was perfect for, for your husband to survive that. And you know, I, I, I, you know, the thing for me was when I finally began to learn that's not the case, like, and you keep talking about the idea of like you're, you're basically in many cases just getting them passing them off to a higher level of care that can continue the hope in the individual or maybe earn the money that they're going to build their insurance company or whatever, however you want to look at it. Like it's this really interesting philosophical dilemma that medics have to process. How, how early in your career did you start to recognize that and then figure out how to process that?
- [40:21]
Tom Raider
I mean, it was definitely before I got in the military, but I hadn't really gelled my internal philosophy about it. I recognized that, you know, there was, that we weren't just a medic, we were like, you know, a family counselor. We were like a, almost like a chaplain role as well, right? Like that kind of like you're there to kind of provide some comfort and care right where you can, you still have to remain professional, you still have to do your job piece, but like you also have to apply the compassion bit, right? And that was one of the times when I started noticing that like, you know, like how long can you sustain that because you can only absorb so much of somebody else's traumas right before you lose that, you, you become duped too salty. Like the medics that you dealt with, right? Like, hey, I'm hungry. Let's go get. Right, like, you know, like, hearing that, right? Like, that's hard for the family to hear. They don't know, right? They haven't had, they haven't, you know, they haven't attended hundreds of deaths, right? Like, this might be the first one they've seen.
- [41:18]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [41:19]
Tom Raider
And so, and so, like, to hear somebody callously, who's supposed to be there saving their loved one say, like, yeah, okay, it, right, let's go get some food now. Right? Like that.
- [41:27]
David Rutherford
They literally, they literally said, tom, they, I said, well, what do we do? Don't we wait for somebody? And a cop was out, outside, and they're like, no, man, it's the cops problems now. Let's go. And, and, and like, was stepping over the body, past the people, and, and I'm just like, what the, what is going on right now? Like, I, I, I was like, I don't even know where to begin to anchor compassion or empathy or do I need to get real good at compartmentalizing real fast? Or I, I didn't know how to process any of that.
- [42:03]
Tom Raider
That, and that's really what it is. I think it's the compartmentalization because, you know, at a certain point, if you're so jaded, right, like, then, and that's a problem, right? Like, the really good medics, right, have been around a long time, but the problem is really good mechs have been around a long time or broken, right? You're just, I, I don't know any, any medics who have been around, like, greater, I would say, five years or more, right, that aren't, like, psychologically broken in some way or another. Because again, you're not ever dealing with people at a good time. It's the worst point of their life. And so the best thing you can do is as long as you're still able to maintain some compassion. I think once you lose that compassion, you should probably start finding you either need to get help. And that's another thing. Just like in the military, nobody wants to go see the wizard and get your own head fixed, right? But really that's what you need, right? You need that kind of, you need that ability to decompress, and nobody ever talks about that. And I think that that's a big injustice through all of that because, you know, we're losing good people, right? You know, like military side and civilian side, even medics, right, like, they, they check out too. Like, they can't deal with that. Trauma. And so you lose this experience, right? Because, you know, like we don't, we don't address the mental health issues that go along with being in these like hyper stressful situations all the time. Like there's just no, like that's the job, right? Like your job is to be in a stressful situation. And you know, like some of us are drawn to that chaos, right? Like there's. Yes, there, there is a, you know, I'm not gonna lie, there's a pull to that. The adrenaline of the rush of getting a call, right? Just like there's a rush, you know, getting an op. An op order, right? Like we're gonna go do a hit, right? So like, yeah, like that's awesome, right? Like you're all jazzed and you want that and you, you know, you feed on that, right? But still, right, like, you know, we're not, you know, as a, as an organism, like running on adrenaline all the time is not, you know, adrenaline cortisol is not really a good, a good long term strategy, you know, but you get addicted to it, right? Or maybe, you know, it's just you're pre, you know, you're predisposed to be addicted to that and that's an outlet where you can experience that. But the problem is, is if you're chasing it for the adrenaline as opposed to the, you know, the reason you're there, I think that's also a problem, right? Like if I'm there because I just want all the sexy trauma stuff, right? And like as a parent, like a civilian medic, right? Like I'm not there to care for the person, I'm there to scratch my own itch, right? Like I think that's, that can be just as bad in a whole.
- [44:38]
David Rutherford
That's fascinating that you just said that, man, because I think support for the
- [44:43]
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- [48:43]
David Rutherford
It was funny, man.
- [48:44]
Tom Raider
I.
- [48:46]
David Rutherford
After my. It was inch because I got my dose, you know, first in the hospitals and in the ERs a little bit, lot less than you did. But I quickly realized because I was, you know, you come out of long course socom, right? You got halfway through like a PA program and all this, and I was like, all right, that's going to be my pathway. I'll become a PA after I get out in 20 years or whatever. And it, man, as soon as I got in those hospitals, I was like, God, these people are miserable. You know, they. There's something missing out of them. And I was like, I don't want that. Then I go into the teams or go back, you know, have, you know, pretty. Pretty significant, go through an incident. My first and only combat deployment in the teams. And now I'm like, that, dude. Like, this is intense, man. When, like, it. It really zaps you. And you know, and I. And I was lucky that the two guys I treated lived and. And you know, one ended up committing suicide through addiction a few years ago. But, you know, and that. That weighs on me heavily because if did I, could I have done something better and he would. I don't know. But also there's this sense of. Of I, I have all this information. It's really powerful. It helps people. But man, the. The debilitating nature of a bad outcome, which seems to be, like you said, it's their worst day no matter what. So the, The. The positive outcome, they didn't die on you. The next positive outcome, they're only going to live with a serious issue, you know what I mean? And so it's all, it's all kind of negative. Like how. Have you, have you ever seen medics? Have you ever seen Minex be able to maintain a more positive approach, if you will, and if so, what about those medics was different?
- [50:56]
Tom Raider
You know, I'd say that's a super interesting question, right? Like my, the pool that I worked with was not, you know, super varied, right. I basically went, you know, from kind of a, you know, a relatively, you know, urban area to, you know, working with, you know, the Marines, right. Like, so honestly, I feel like, you know. Yeah, no, I haven't really seen a whole lot that have made that a good transition. I mean, not, I know there are some out there and some of my friends, I got a couple friends who were medics. Like one that I worked with teaching for years and years and years. And he's like one of the most kind and gentle people I know. And you know, like, he has maintained that and he still does like ski patrol. He like, he's like a fixture of the state of New Mexico, right? Like, he's just been involved in EMS since like it was created, right? Like rubbing rocks together to fix people or whatever the shit, right. Like, I mean, and like, he's probably one of maybe a couple people I know that, that have done that. And you know, I don't know if it's just how he's wired, how his brain is wired, right? Like, or the populations he's worked with or what, right. Like, you know, and I don't think he was necessarily an adrenaline junkie either. He just got kind of thrown into the medic stuff like, you know, kind of early on and then just kind of helped build up departments around and you know, and I think part of it for him was he, he worked with, you know, specialized populations like ski patrol, stuff like that. Kind of a small town, you know, so there wasn't a lot of, like this, you know, you know, horrible troll, like some DFW area like Dallas Fort Worth, right? You've got, you know, there's like lots of drugs, there's lots of, you know, gang violence and stuff. And so like I, I, the department I worked in or the area I worked in had a lot of, had a lot of that stuff and that's the stuff I was seeking, right? Like, I wanted the, the high speed crazy, right? Because like, you know, the medical stuff is interesting, but I'm not Dr. House, MD. Like, I don't want to spend like trying to figure out what random disease process you have running on. Right. I want to, I want to patch holes and package them up and feel good about myself at the end of the day for, you know, stopping the dying right then. And, you know, and he was like, more on the other side, but he also worked a lot with the training, so he did a lot more training. And so I think for him and you know, like, I, you know, it's actually a good question I should go actually ask him after, you know, next time I hook up with him. But like, to find out like, what, what it was about that, like, why he, he didn't become like a jaded, you know, burnt out medic, you know. And, you know, maybe it was, maybe it was like, you know, bringing up the new generations and training, you know, you know, passing on the training on the torch and that was his kind of outlet for, you know, really kind of, you know, increasing the, the availability of medicine in a, in a relatively rural state. Right. So rather than, you know, patching a few people here, he trained the people who patch hundreds, right? Yeah. And, you know, so maybe it's something like that, right? And like that's, you know, like, you know, that's where I branched into, is started to do the training side, right. As opposed to, like, you know, I don't have a desire to touch patients anymore, right. Like, I'm just, I'm, I'm over that piece. Like, I kind of got burnt out, honestly, a little bit as a civilian medic too, right. Like, because you deal, unlike in the military, where you're dealing with like kind of healthy 18 to 25 year olds, right. Who, you know, just make poor choices with things, right? Dealing with civilian, like you're dealing with infants all the way up to geriatric patients. And that's a whole different breadth of medicine, right? And like, we're hardwired like, you know, as a species, I would say to protect innocence at least. I kind of feel like protect the innocence among us, right. Who are the ones who can't protect themselves. So like children and, you know, the elderly and stuff like that. And so when you see damage done to, you know, infants and kids like that, I feel like that has a higher psychological toll, right. Than, you know, like a peer group, like somebody that's like kind of mid-20s, like kind of adulting and making poor choices, right. Like, you know, like, you know, BASE jumping, right. Or like, you know, rock climbing and stuff. Like that, like, hey, you know, you did that. But you know, somebody who injures an infant, right. Like that's, you know, dealing with that infant. So like, so that kind of burnt me out a little bit too. Right. Like dealing with that side of it where it's like, you know, how do you.
- [55:17]
David Rutherford
The darker aspects of society, right. That are bleeding into these medical circumstances. Yeah, yeah.
- [55:24]
Tom Raider
And like parents who don't care, like the abuse and that kind of stuff. And it's just like you don't, you don't see that in the military. So, you know, my last hurrah is doing medical stuff was in the military with people who were in a very narrow age range. It didn't have a lot of other problems, comorbidities going on. Right. And the problem set was very straightforward. Right. And so I didn't have to worry about like this abuse situation, like, you know, like weird stuff happening, you know, like it was all pretty straightforward stuff. And you know, so that was a good landing place for me to kind of exit as a, as an operational medic, I think. So, like, that was kind of my fix. That was the way to get out of that. Right.
- [56:06]
David Rutherford
That's really fascinating. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool, man. That's one of the best descriptions I've, I've ever heard somebody say about it then. Well, since you, you went through all of that, what made you want to go out and keep teaching medicine? Like, why did you think it was such a viable one? Wait, something that was going to give you. Right. Those things that obviously made you want to do it in the first place. But what is teaching medicine give you in the civilian world that you first. What did you think it was going to give you and what hasn't it? Has it given you and maybe describe a little bit what you teach now?
- [56:52]
Tom Raider
Well, yeah, so it's a good point. Like when we were, you know, pre deployment, like we trained up some of the Marines how to do medicine because he was going to take care of me if I go down. Right. So it's that kind of force multiplier thing. You cross train people and you know, the more people that can do basic medicine, right. The better things are in general. Like, you know, that gets into a deeper philosophical thing that I kind of developed internally, is that this whole self preparedness thing, like we as a society have kind of lost that ability to take care of our own problems. We, we, we have, we press the easy button for everything. We dial 91 1, we, you know, grubhub our Food, right? Like, there's, like, you know, we don't forage, like, so. So we've lost some of these abilities to take care of what should be simple things, right? And I think that that's, you know, being able to teach people how to handle problems, I think, is a very, you know, especially from a medical standpoint, is a very important thing. Like, you know, without. On the medical profession, right. Like, we tend to put doctors on a pedestal. Like there's some kind of magical mythical creature, right? And the reality is it's a technical skill, right? Like, people are people, right? We have been dealing without Western medicine for tens of thousands of years or longer, Right? Like, Western medicine is a relatively new phenomenon, right? You know, keeping us alive, doing stuff. And. Yeah, it's absolutely amazing some of the stuff that we can do, right? But most of human history, we haven't had that. And so. And, you know, we've made it to this point as a species, right? So, like, how do we do that without these magical creatures called doctors, like, keeping us alive? Well, I mean, we're hardwired to know how to fix certain things, right? We know how to fix problems, and we know how to take care of each other. And so I think, you know, kind of getting back to that, right. Like, you know, and teaching, you know, people how to handle some of their own problems without having to, you know, call a paramedic, because that was also an issue as a paramedic, is. Most of your calls are right. It's. You know, I hate to say it, but you're getting calls for things that.
- [58:47]
David Rutherford
Difficulty breathing.
- [58:49]
Tom Raider
Yeah. It was like you could take yourself to the hospital or wait for.
- [58:52]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [58:53]
Tom Raider
You don't need an ambulance to drive you, right. You know, to taxi to wherever, right. Or, like, if you're hunting drugs or whatever, like, go figure. Go talk to somebody on the street corner, right? Like, don't come to me, me. Right? Like, that's not my job, right. I want to deal with actual people who are injured and sick, and I have no problem treating people who are actual injured and sick, but people who are obviously right, Not. Not right. That. That's problematic, and it's a drain on the system. And, you know, I feel that some of those people just don't know any better, right? Like, we had somebody that called us up when I was a paramedic that. That needed ibuprofen, and it was like, yeah, there's like a Walgreens, like, around the corner, right? Like, walk or walk your ass over there and get a Bottle, right? Like, you don't need to call, you know, a city service to come and bring you a couple pills. Again, we're not going to. So just. Right. So, like, you see that and you're like, that's. That's what they were trained to do, though. It's like, oh, if you have a problem, call 91 1. So, you know, I see that as like, you know, kind of a greater problem in just our society is that we don't, you know, people don't know what to do because again, we put, you know, we put this particular profession on this pedestal and we've been dealing with Aurora. Like, an example I talked about, like, before is like, you know, when you were a kid, right, you tried to get out of. I'm sure you tried to get out of going to one day, like, pretending to be sick, right? And mom or dad was like, no, get your ass. Go to school. Like, and how do they know? They probably weren't a doctor, right? It's because they could tell that you're not sick, right? We know when you're sick or not. You know, like I said, I could, I could take, you know, 10 people make. If I could bless one of them or curse one of them to be super sick, I bet I could bring most people into the room and they could pick out the sick person immediately. Now, they might not know exactly what to do with that person, but, like, you could tell that they're sick. And we know basic things, right? Like, are you, are you eating or have you had anything to drink, Right? Like, you know, are you, you know, washing your hands, right? There's basic things that most people can do. Like you've got a big jagged cut. Most people are probably going to slap their hand on it and try to stop the bleeding somehow. They're not just going to sit there with the blood spraying out. They're going to try to do something. So what medical training allows is to give people a few little tools to kind of solve those problems, right? Using simple concepts. Because medicine is not hard. It really isn't. I mean, when you talk Dr. Halcyon D stuff Shirt, right? Like you're talking about, like, these rare, weird conditions. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, like, basic stuff, right? Like keep stuff clean, right?
- [61:11]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [61:11]
Tom Raider
You know, you know, hydrate yourself, right? It's the same. So we had to teach Marines, right? Like, change your socks, drink water, right? Like, it's, you know, I mean, it's. We laugh about it. It's a big meme and joke. But it's true.
- [61:23]
David Rutherford
It's so true.
- [61:25]
Tom Raider
Like hygiene is such a huge thing and people just don't do it. Like, you know, like in boot camp they teach you how to brush your teeth. Why is that? Right. Because most people don't know how to brush their teeth correctly. Right. It's sad, but it's true. Right. And those are things that relate to medical. Right? Because if your teeth rot in your head, right, that's going to be a problem and it's going to make your, your unit non operational because you've got an abscessed tooth or whatever, right. So there's like these little things that go into it. So like teaching medicine is I think, a way to kind of provide back a little bit and help people understand that they can maybe solve some of their own problems. And you know, and then there's also professions where like, you know, they, they just don't know they're in dangerous professions and they're not provided the opportunity or the training that's necessary to help them. Right. So like I teach, I do a course with wildland firefighters and they had a case where a young brand new wildland firefighter guy severely injured a sawyer dropped a tree. They're chainsawing a tree down, the bowl came down, hit him, cracked his femur. And this kid bled to death in front of about 100 people over the course of three hours. Yeah. And it's like it's a case study is it's Andy Palmer. You can look it up on YouTube. It's a horrible video. It's very well documented. And the shit of it is, is that this kid died a third of a mile up a dozer line from a road on the anniversary of his death. They, for the past few years, they take a dummy and they carry it down. It's never taken more than 13 minutes to carry this like dummy down to the road where they could have taken him to a hospital. Nobody knew how to hemorrhage control. They were fighting over cares, communication, leadership problems is a huge thing, right? And so like there's this whole population and they decided like, hey, maybe we should never let that happen again. That's a, that's a pretty little bit of egg in our face. Let's not do that again.
- [63:13]
David Rutherford
Right?
- [63:14]
Tom Raider
So like, so that's one of the populations I've been teaching for, for the past few years is this wildland fire population. And we just teach them a simple kind of wilderness medicine, stop the bleed course, right? Like this is how you stop the dying from happening. And then here's how you do basic hygiene and hydration. And here's how you recognize is, is this problem serious enough that we need to get them off of work and send them to be somebody else's problem? Right. Are they staying the same? Are they getting better, are they getting worse? It doesn't have to be like this identification of like, well, which of the, you know, 200 plus bones in the body got broken? I don't matter. Is it stable or unstable, right? Like can it be used towards intended function or not? No, send them to go get it fixed. If yes, like bandage it up and you know, give them, put them back to work, right. Like it doesn't have to be like this over complicated thing. And so we take students that have had no medical training and they're functional and the course that we run has no PowerPoint. We do hardly any PowerPoint. It's all hands on training. Because medicine's a contact sport, you know that, right. And that was one of the bitches I had in my training is that it was all, most of it was book learning until we started doing the field stuff stuff. And I didn't really learn the medicine until I started doing the field stuff, right? Because you can sit there and you can jerk off and make everything in the book, the knowledge back and forth and debate topics and memorize these random weird facts, but the end of the day, can I stop somebody from bleeding out right now? That's the important thing. I've got a few seconds to make a decision to throw on a tourniquet and get that tourniquet on correctly. And can I do that under pressure, right? And not in a training environment where somebody's standing there letting you do it. Like where they're thrashing around cause they just got shot or stabbed or whatever, right? Like you need, you need that, that crucible of real life and real hands on training. And so, you know, being able to provide an environment where you provide like a stress, like stress inoculation, right? That's the way you do it. And you, you know, aside from putting somebody actually in that, you know, in an actual scenario, which you can't. I can't go shoot and stab a student in class. I guess I probably could if we were in the military or whatever, who knows, right? Dark shit in some of those classes, right. In a civilian context you can't do that. So you can, but you can introduce, you can put somebody in a stressful situation, right? Just kind of like they do in A selection process. Right. Like, the, the idea is to, is to push you past your limits and put you in a bad mind state and see if you can still perform. Right. I mean, yeah, when you break it down, that's really what it is. And so adopting those mindset trainings that came from the military and applying that to civilian training in a less aggressive way maybe. Right. You know, does have some ability to train people to perform and to do these basic skills. And so I think that that's, you know, being able to take somebody who has no training. Right. And then have them able to successfully do these skills and then hear later that they actually did them and they remembered them. Right. Because they were taught in this particular way. Right. Well, that's the force multiplying I was talking about earlier. Right. Like, I've now made other people who can fix people. Right. And is it perfect? No, it's never going to be perfect. But did they stabilize somebody long enough to make it somebody else's problem?
- [66:27]
David Rutherford
Yeah, and that's, that's, I mean, I, I can't even tell you how many times I've, I've had, you know, because I, I taught all the medical stuff in SEAL qualification training. I talk all the medical. And all the Blackwater courses that I ran. I taught all the medical at the agency when I taught. Right. I've done a few civilian courses back when I first left the agency. And, and you know, it's, everybody's great until you've got that moulage blood just squirting you in the face and you're generating, you have the patient start screaming and like all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm. It's a sterile environment. This is your direct pressure dressing. Then all of a sudden they're squirting the face, they're screaming, they're hanging upside down from a seat belt in a car. And, and, and now, and now you see the people go from that classroom environment to the, the actual field training. And their, their eyes are this big and their heart rate, they can't speak correctly. Right. They can't even undo the packaging because they lose physical dexterity. Right. And you just like, you can't get that in any other scenario than putting yourself in the scenario in a training scenario in the hopes that when you do, you know, you're driving down the highway and you see a, an insane motor vehicle accident, you've got your little trauma kit, you know, that you've got. And you get out and you run up and, you know, there's somebody that's got two open compound fractures in their femurs and, you know, whatever it is, and they've got a, a neat attention pneumothorax because their lung collapsed and they're just, you know, and you, you can stay calm and you can deliver that care right there. There's, there's not many places that are activities that give you the total, what is it? The total emotional sensation of man. Not only when I was in a really stressful life and death situation, but I also kept my head, I remembered my training, and I got this person to the next level of care. And man, that's a really powerful thing. Do you, do you. Is there ever. I mean, obviously there's got to be students who come through who don't quite get or whatever. But I would say, I would think, because I remember most of the training that I did, I did have captive audience of people that were serving mostly. But do you see kind of that light bulb go off and then do you get. People send you stories about how they employed your training in a positive way?
- [69:15]
Tom Raider
Yeah, yeah, all the time. I mean, you know, the wildland firefighter community is a pretty. Right, it's, it's probably as close to some like, austere military stuff as you're gonna get. You know, civilian side, right? There's a lot of danger. They're working with power tools, right? Like, it's, you know, a nasty environment. Right. They're living in camps, right. Like, so there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of parallels there. And so, yeah, so we, we have people who, you know, like, like, you know, some of the population, right, they, they're, they might not be the most educated, right. Like, they didn't go to college, right. Like, they went this other track, right? And they're just doers, right? And so like you're sitting them in front of like 40 hours of PowerPoint to explain how to, you know, put on the tourniquet. You're going to lose every single one of them. Because they're field people, they want to do stuff in the field. And so doing the hands on training is really where it comes in. They get it. And you can see, like every class will get, you know, several of them. And especially when we have some of the students who have been through some kind of medical training, like urban ems, right? So you get the EMT and they're in there and they're like all, yeah, you're not gonna teach me, right? Like that kind of. Right. Because Wilderness medicine is not urban ems, right? Like it's, there's no, there's no corollary to that. Like you're having to make do with hardly any resources. Your closest care might be an hour away. So you have to solve problems and, right, you have to think outside the box and you have to be able to come up with solutions. And so by the end of the course, generally that's the litmus is that if there's a medic, there's some kind of like, you know, EMT or whatever in the class, like converting them over. Get the aha moment where it's like, oh yeah, like I'm used to doing this with a giant box of everything.
- [70:46]
David Rutherford
Everything, right? A mobile box of everything and a 16 minute time window, right? Yeah.
- [70:53]
Tom Raider
And I take all those resources away and say, okay, you've got like, you've got this little shitty broken aluminum splint and like some torn fabric, like, what are you gonna do now, right? It's like, okay, you better solve the problem because you can't, you can't just watch, you're not gonna watch them die. So figure it out. And so, yeah, so it's. So we'll get that aha moment then. Like people who've never done it before, like they, they drink the Kool Aid right away, right? Like that's right, because to them, right, like they see the application for it and they, you know, they've known people who have been injured, right? Like, so when they come to these classes, right, most of them have a story already, you know, of like somebody they wish they could have helped or they saw this thing and they felt helpless or whatever. And now we're giving them some tools and initially they get overwhelmed, right? Because we're throwing a lot of information, we're packing a ton of material into like a five day course. But like the thing we keep reminding them is like you, like we're going to teach you how to stop the dying, right? Like that's a big portion, right? Like stop, you know, throw the tourniquet on, like, you know, that, that kind of stuff, like fix the breathing, like those types of things. Those are, you know, we'll spend a bunch of time on that. The rest of the stuff just figure out is it serious or not serious, is it getting better, is it getting worse? If you can do that at the end of the class, right, and figure out what, you know, how to access resources, that's the big thing. And so that's, you know, like that, that's. And that's what failed this poor kid that died on the fire, right, Is that they, they, they didn't have. Nobody made a decision. Right? And that's really what it came down to. So it's more honestly the decision and communications class than it is anything else. We just teach it through the use of medicine. Right? And, you know, and you pick up some medical skills along the way. And that's really, you know, a good analog for thinking about medicine in general and first aid. Right. Make a decision. Don't just be paralyzed by it. Right. You know, we, we tend to be terrified of these things, but we don't need to be. It's, it's people's inability to make decisions, right. I think more so than it is like a technical inability to do something. Right. I can teach a kid to put on a tourniquet. It's not that hard of a skill, right? It really isn't. Right. I mean, you know, we joke. You could teach, you know, if I have enough bananas, I can teach a monkey to do it, right? Same thing, right? Like so, so there's nothing technically hard in this, but it's a matter of getting people to make a decision, to recognize it's actually a problem and to not paralyze when they see the problem. That bystander effect, right? Everybody's standing around looking at the guy dying on the, on the road, nobody calling 91 1, nobody stepping in and doing CPR. So you just have to break that piece of it, right? You have to break that, that whatever that thing is in their brain that causes them to paralyze. You know, same thing that you would see down the range in combat, right? Like, you know, you get the people who freeze. You can't freeze in combat, right? I mean, you can, but that's, it's not going to be a long, long term survival solution.
- [73:32]
David Rutherford
Right?
- [73:33]
Tom Raider
Right. So you have to break that mindset. You have to, you have to become somebody who is, who is embracing the action and you have to engage the action and there's just no way around it. And so, you know, again, doing the training, it's that stress inoculation. You just, you train as close to the situation as you can to teach them that, yes, you can actually make a decision. You can operate when things are going bad. You just have to focus on the problem at hand, figure out the worst problem right now and deal with that. Right? If there's 30 problems going on, you can't solve all of them at once. Solve the one that's most critical or the closest one. To you and then move on to the next. So break these tasks into small things, right? It's like, you know, that applies across any industry, honestly. Right. So.
- [74:15]
David Rutherford
Well, I. I think anything that has a modicum of stress involved, if you don't have a system, right, A system that you can reset to as things start to escalate emotionally, right? You know, that was the big thing. I remember going through 18 Delta was like, oh, you now, you got, like, oh, you got afib. Now you got vtac, right? And you're like, ah. And then you're watching the monitor and then you've got no blood, and then it just. They crash on you and you're like, what are you gonna do? And my, My. I always say this, like, there was always the, you know, you do something, you look at the instructor and they. They look at you and they go, you got what you got? And I remember every time I'd get that, my. My pulse rate would increase, right? My panic would increase, right? What am I missing? And then what do you do? I go back to the beginning of basics, my basics, and I go through my system check, and then I shock, shock, shock, big shock, little shock, mama shock, papa shock, right? Or whatever, whatever it is, right? Like, you just, you know, that's how.
- [75:22]
Tom Raider
I know how old you are.
- [75:25]
David Rutherford
Just saying that. That's right. That's. That's right. How you're. You're this old because you use this pneumatic training system.
- [75:31]
Tom Raider
That's right.
- [75:33]
David Rutherford
But again, I think one of the unique aspects about getting medical training is it does cover. It does introduce you in. In a much more positive way to managing stress through that stress inoculation. And then. And. And it sounds like you really focus on that when you teach these, you know, the people that you're working with, that. That. That's the system that's going to save your body in those tough places.
- [76:03]
Tom Raider
Yeah. Make a decision, right? If the decision is to pick them up and carry them, then that's a decision and go with it, right? Like, you know, again, right? Like, what would it say to Sandy Palmer, right? 13 minutes from the road, right? Instead of 100 people standing around for three hours watching him bleed out. Right? Like, you know, make a decision. Somebody needs to make a decision. Yeah. And, you know, that's what a lot of it comes down to, is just that, paralysis. Well, somebody else will make a decision, right? Somebody else should be in charge doing this. Well, it's like the joke of the military, right, is if you have to ask who's in Charge more than once. It's you, you, right? Like that's, you know, there you go, step up. Right? Like there's no you. You don't get to hide in a small team, right? Like there's no. Yeah, like if there's a job needs to get done, it's everybody's. It's everybody's responsibility to whole extreme ownership. Right? It's all of our responsibility. Right. We should be fighting over who's in charge, not like who's going to take over for it. Right?
- [76:57]
David Rutherford
That's right. That's right. That's awesome. That's awesome, Tom. Well, man, just, I can't thank you enough for your time today. I thought the way you broke that down, you know, everybody, as you and I both know, people look at medicine as this kind of mythical problem set that only experts can figure out. But you know, someone with a baseline of how to stop bleeding and how to splint or, you know, how to make a decision, like you just said, man, can save lives out there. Where, what, where can people follow you? What kind of courses do you got coming up and where can people kind of. I know you also are part of an organization that does sell medical equipment. Tell us about all that.
- [77:46]
Tom Raider
Yeah, so some of that's kind of on pause right now. I've just been doing a couple other things. I have a whole other, I don't know, like many of us, right. Like we dabble in many things all at the same time. So I do kind of courses sporadically. Right now I have a company that does that. I can leave you a link for that. And then. And yeah, so like mainly we do closed courses. It's mobile training team. So we come out and do training for people because it's a little easier than having kind of ones and twos here and there, Right. It's just more effective when you have a greater number of people because you can set up mass casualties and really increase that stress. As far as the medical stuff, I have a buddy who's running that stuff now has kind of taken over that. And I'll give you a link to that as well. Well, but really, I mean, there's plenty of good first aid stuff out there. It's just a matter of like, don't fall for gimmicks, but have something. Right? Like at least have a first aid kit in your car, right? It's where you're more likely to see it. Not everybody needs to have like the high speed trauma kit and, you know, all the crazy stuff because the reality is, is you're, you're, you're going to use band aids and, you know, antiseptics far more than you're going to be throwing tourniquets on people. Right? So just, you know, that's the reality situation. Right? Hydration, nutrition, hygiene, those are the, it's the boring side of medicine, but it's what you're going to do most.
- [79:00]
David Rutherford
That's right. That's awesome. Well, Tom, thank you so much, brother, and good luck and God bless you.
- [79:06]
Tom Raider
All right, thanks for having me on.
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